


A Confession at Whitminster

by StopTalkingAtMe



Category: The Residence at Whitminster - M. R. James
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Anal Sex, Canon-typical First Person POV, Dubious Consent, Emotional Manipulation, Horror, M/M, POV First Person, Underage - under 18, blow-job, this entire relationship is a bad fucking idea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:01:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23409475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopTalkingAtMe/pseuds/StopTalkingAtMe
Summary: When Lord Saul arrived at Whitminster, he meant to ignore Frank Sydall, but Frank proves harder to ignore than he anticipated.
Relationships: Viscount Saul/Demons, Viscount Saul/Frank Sydall
Comments: 8
Kudos: 11
Collections: Smut 4 Smut 2020





	A Confession at Whitminster

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bleustocking](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bleustocking/gifts).



_They will tell you that I was wicked_.

So begins a document in my possession, purported to be a confession written by the Lord Viscount Saul, an infamous character who is said to have haunted the churchyards of Whitminster for the past century or so. The confession is addressed to his father, the then Earl of Kildonan, and while I have not yet been able to satisfy myself as to the truth of its provenance, what I can state with certainty is that the Earl was lucky never to have had the misfortune of clapping his eyes on it, its having lain undiscovered and undisturbed in the prebendal house at Whitminster for several decades at least, and that the opening line which I have relayed above is wholly and unquestionably true.

For my own part, I had given little thought to the matter of ghosts until I came to Whitminster in the autumn of 1840, drawn there by the history and architecture of the church, and by the fact of my having had distant relatives living in the area. It struck me as a particularly gloomy place from the outset, although the weather was pleasant and mild, and my hosts congenial. I had on my wanderings seen the tomb shared by the two boys in the churchyard, and the inscription upon the stone had struck me at the time as significant, filling me with an eerie foreboding although I could not have said why. As I strolled, the sun passed behind a cloud, and a gloom fell over the yard, leaving me unaccountably chilled and aware of a flicker of movement in the corner of my eye, yet each time I turned my head I found nothing there.

That night—the third of my so far uneventful stay—my sleep was very disturbed and my dreams unnerving, haunted by the shadows of tombstones and the same barely glimpsed movement, now lent more shape: what had almost certainly been the movement of a darting cat or the long grass stirred by the wind became a group of figures with terrible aspects cavorting, crouched low with their bellies to the ground. After one particularly vivid dream, I stirred to feel the tickle of insect feet upon my neck, and fumbled, still half-asleep, to brush the creature off. My fingers met only my own skin, but the movement was enough to bring me fully out of sleep, and as I sat up, meaning to punch my pillow back into a more fitting shape, my gaze fell upon the window—which looked out upon the churchyard—and I exclaimed in shock at the sight of what appeared to be a pallid and pinched face peering in at me.

The illusion seemed only to last a moment, and then it was only my own face reflected in the glass, looking startled but no worse for wear.

Feeling a little foolish, I lay back down, although my heart continued to race in my chest, and a long while passed before I fell back into an uneasy and restless sleep. In the morning, I begged my hosts’ pardon if I had inadvertently disturbed them in the night and recounted what I thought I had seen with an air of amused self-deprecation. I was taken aback when Mr and Mrs Simpkins took in my tale with grim expressions. ‘So he’s back,’ said Mr Simpkins, and upon my questioning, he proceeded to recount the tale that had been passed down from his grandfather. For my part, I found the tale rather settled my discomfited nerves, since I had little fear of ghosts, and I am afraid I found the whole thing delightfully ghoulish, particularly the enduring image of Lord Saul fleeing for his life through the town, clinging on to the ring of the minster door in desperate terror of the hunt chasing him to his petrified death. I did my best to conceal my growing amusement, since my host and his wife seemed quite shaken by the prospect of Lord Saul’s return. 

The story so captured my imagination that upon my introduction to the current prebendentary, Dr Oldys, I soon contrived to turn the topic of conversation to local ghost stories and the like, and he proved kind enough to show me, with some reluctance, to the little used room which the Lord Saul and Frank Sydall had shared so briefly some hundred years previously. I found it rather damp and chilly, but otherwise unobjectionable aside from a musty smell of disuse and neglect and a few dead insects lying on the window sill, the sight of which seemed to cause Dr Oldys to shudder with revulsion. I thought it a rather splendid story with which I could return to Cambridge, my very own ghost and discovered in the field, so to speak, but Dr Oldys’s indulgence would only go so far. Upon my questioning further whether there might be any supporting evidence—diaries, letters, and the like—I was gently but firmly rebuffed. There were indeed various documents of one form or another, but they had all been packaged up and locked away, and it was quite out of the question that I should be allowed to see them. He was so sincerely apologetic and quite clearly shaken, with all the colour draining from his cheeks, that I felt unable to press the matter further, so with some reluctance, I accepted his refusal and only asked if I might stay to examine the room a little more closely. This he agreed to readily, and with some relief he retreated to afford me with some space, although I suspected he did so more from a disinclination to remain in a room he clearly loathed than to provide me with any semblance of privacy. 

Aside from the dead insects, there was nothing to be found, and so with some reluctance I turned to go, pausing when a floorboard creaked beneath my tread. I took a careful glance at the door, but judged that Dr Oldys was unlikely to return, and so, familiar with the habits of boys being as I was a relatively young man myself, I knelt and carefully levered up the floorboard, barely able to temper my anticipatory thrill of discovery with the almost certain knowledge that there would be nothing there to find.

Not nothing. Not nothing, at all. The recess within was filled with dust and grime, and enough of the dried-up husks of the dead insects to force me to repress my own shudder of distaste, and there amongst them nestled a sheaf of paper.

After scarcely a moment’s hesitation, I snatched the papers up, and ascertained with only a brief glance at the words that the questionable spelling and style of writing were that of the previous century. Knowing that should I reveal my discovery to Dr Oldys it would no doubt join the rest of the evidence wherever it had been hidden, I concealed it beneath my coat.

For that, I pray he will forgive me. Perhaps I am very nearly as wicked as Lord Saul was, in my own small and petty way.

* * *

The history of the tale is a sad one and I had already had something of it from Mr Simpkins, enough to know that Lord Saul was unquestionably the villain of the piece and the essential facts of the case: Lord Saul’s arrival at Whitminster in the autumn of 1730, and his subsequent friendship—if friendship is the correct word—with Frank Sydall, the orphaned ward of the prebendary of the time, Dr Thomas Ashton. From reading the confession, it is clear that Saul did not much like Frank at all at first, resenting him, or rather resenting the assumption that as they were boys of much the same age—Frank’s sixteen years of age to Lord Saul’s seventeen—they naturally ought to be friends, when their circumstances were so very different, with Frank being dependent on his uncle’s charity. Perhaps matters might have been different if Frank had been treated more cruelly by his guardian, but Dr Ashton, as remote as he was, still displayed some signs of fondness towards the boy for all that he wasn’t a blood-relation, certainly more than Lord Saul’s father ever showed towards him.

I suspect there was a degree of envy at play. By all accounts, Frank had a certain classical beauty that Lord Saul lacked, with golden hair and a good-natured simplicity that made everyone very fond of him. Some of the maidservants were already half in love with him, which made Saul hate him all the more, particularly as Frank seemed oblivious to the effect he had on the young women. On his arrival at Whitminster, Saul meant to ignore Frank, to involve himself in his self-directed studies and by doing so prove to his father that he could be brought home, but Frank proved harder to ignore than Saul had anticipated.

Simply put, Frank was unused to not being liked and he had both the determination and the thick skin of a typical English gentleman’s son, and so he hid his hurt at Saul’s rejection and studied lack of interest, and redoubled his attempts to charm him. Frank had a way of looking at Saul with a tentative and hopeful smile, like a faithful dog cringing at the feet of its cruel master. It left him feeling at once both attraction and revulsion, and perhaps it was ultimately that very revulsion that drew Saul to him, for how it reminded him of _them_.

They—the author of the confession goes into little detail about ‘their’ true nature— had followed him from Ireland, trailing in his wake like faithful wolfhounds, eager for the hunt to begin. Their baying was like no sound he had ever heard on earth, less a sound then a sensation, a thrilling in his chest, like the pulsing of the heart when the blood was up. Two or three of them, sometimes more, like shadows, their weight pressing on his bed in the deep pitch of night. They would whisper to him while Frank slept soundly in the other bed, the blankets rumpled back and the moonlight glinting on his hair, and all the while hot breath at Saul’s ear.

Even then, nothing might have come of it if Frank had not caught Saul with the glass tablet. This happened midway through October, with the last of the summer gone, the trees stripped of the golds and crimsons of autumn, and heralding the stark bleakness of the coming winter, and as the last of the summer slipped away, so too did Lord Saul’s companions.

At first Saul put this down to the difference between the lands of Ireland and England, that due to the stronger barrier between the lands of the living and the dead that their purchase on the world was failing. Towards the end of the confession he acknowledges their true purpose, that they, the ones who had shown him so many terrible and wondrous things, were deliberately drawing him ever further down the path of wickedness. Their distancing, he came to believe, was purposeful, intended to stoke his fear and loneliness and to make him desperate to prove to them that he was worthy, so when Frank asked, as curious and good-natured as ever, just what it was that Saul held in his hands, Saul showed him.

‘It shows you things,’ said Lord Saul, holding out the object he grasped, a scrying glass he had brought with him from Ireland. 

Despite the chill, Frank’s hands were warm beneath Saul’s as he showed him how to hold it, how to peer into its depths and let his gaze adjust. Frank seemed rather more intent on Saul than upon the tablet, seeming glad that Saul had finally deigned to pay him attention and not altogether certain what to do with it now that he had it, or even whether he really wanted it. As for the glass, he seemed at first to think it a trick until Saul laughed at him and urged him to look more closely. Not believing, but wanting to humour or please Saul, Frank did as he was bid, and a few moments later, his expression changed. Saul watched him avidly, having not known until that moment whether it would work. 

Whatever Frank saw it left him flustered and holding back tears, but smiling too, as though whatever it was that he had seen in that circle of polished glance was something he had found comforting, and what else would a lonely orphaned boy with Frank’s innocent nature wish to see but his beloved mother?

The first time Saul looked in the glass, he had seen his father. Not the confirmation of a parent’s love which he suspected was the message Frank took away from his first and sweetest glance beneath the surface, but something no less pleasing: he saw the Earl of Kildonan seated in his study, clutching something in his cupped hands, and while Saul was not so close as to be able to see it clearly, he knew with certainty that his father held the very stone into which Saul was peering. It was a half-fancy of his, then and in the moments to come, that the Earl had been able to see Saul in return, and that an understanding might develop between them. It seemed a confirmation of something that part of him had known all along: that he was his father’s son.

There was comfort in it, enough to bait and hook the unwary, and Frank was as hooked as Saul was and eager to see more. Up until this moment, he had accepted Saul’s rejection of his early overtures of friendship with regret and a little sadness, but he had after all managed without companionship of his own age for a long time, and knew he could bear it. Upon seeing the glass tablet all had changed. His eagerness was tempered by modesty, but no one could mistake the hunger in him now.

At night, Saul would hear the change in his breathing, no longer the steady even rhythm of sleep. A moment later Frank would roll over, while Saul continued to pretend to sleep, while a strange heat crept up his wrist and along his arm from where his hand clasped the tablet. Frank’s urgency—and how desperately he tried to conceal it—was like a spur to a horse: Saul could no longer ignore him or remain indifferent to him, especially when _they_ returned and he once more was able to steal out into the night, away from the stifling cloistered peace of the residences and into the town with them at his heels.

His joy at their return was indescribable, a bitter and slavish thing that he resented almost as much as he welcomed, even as he roamed the moonlit churchyard, past the stones standing like obelisks, with the grass all silvered with the moonlight, and the indistinct figures at his back. Never seen full on, but glimpsed through snatched impressions, they seemed to him very strange and thin, not much like hounds at all although he had though them so at first, but something closer to a man hunched low with his belly to the ground. Still they were so fast that when he tried to turn about on them, to see them clearly, they would flit behind him so quickly he would catch sight of nothing but a blur of grey movement.

‘Where is it that you go at night?’ asked Frank after stirring one night. In the darkness he kept his voice soft, as if he hoped that perhaps Saul was asleep after all. Saul in his turn contemplated remaining silent and continuing in the counterfeit of sleep. Perhaps, after all, it would have been better for both of them if he had, but he could no more have stayed silent than could Frank. And so instead he rolled over onto his side, and saw the other boy gilded by moonlight, his silvered shining hair, his too bright eager eyes.

‘Only out,’ said Saul. ‘I like to walk. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep. I did so in Ireland too.’

‘Do you...’ Frank stopped.

‘Do I what?’ asked Saul. Frank gave him a sharp look, so piercing that Saul wondered perhaps if he had misjudged him. Frank seemed to have a way of cutting to the heart of things. ‘Ah. You mean the glass?’

Frank flushed and looked away. ‘Do you still have it?’

As Saul produced it, Frank was already scrambling out of his bed. His eyes fixed hungrily upon the glass as he knelt on Saul’s bed, his fair countenance flushed with excitement at the prospect of handling it once more.

From then on they became something like friends. Frank was a mediocre student of Greek and his Latin was not much better, but in the use of the glass he proved an eager study, allowing Saul to guide him in its use, willingly Saul’s necessary proximity, Saul kneeling close on the bed, with his hands pressed warm over Frank’s, his fingers resting lightly on the wrists, feeling the sinews and tendons bunching beneath the skin. Their heads would bend so close fair hair would mingle with dark, and he could feel the warmth of Frank’s breath on his face. Frank would mutter softly under his breath, make momentary gasps, and once he gave a sudden exclamation and looked up sharply, staring about him as if he expected to see something there watching.

‘What is it?’ asked Saul, and Frank shook his head, as if trying to shake off a strange notion.

‘For a moment I… I thought something was looking over my shoulder, kneeling on the bed behind me.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Saul soothingly, ‘there was something there. I’ve felt them too, you know. And didn’t you, that first time? You felt something then too.’

Frank pressed his lips together, casting an uneasy look over his left shoulder. Saul seized his chance and leaned close, bringing his mouth to Frank’s ear. ‘Who did you see?’ asked Saul, his voice low, ripe with promise.

Frank’s voice was lower than a whisper, escaping on a breath. ‘My mother.’

Saul pulled back. Frank’s face was as pale as marble, except for the lightest flush in his cheeks, and with his eyes closed his long eyelashes rested against the upper slope of his cheekbones. Good God, but he was lovely, and Saul felt a needle of something very like envy—or perhaps covetousness—that stabbed right to his heart.

‘What if?’ said Saul. ‘What if you could bring her back?’

* * *

Something changed between them after then. Heretofore they had been like boys playing at games, but they were neither one of them boys any longer. A newfound determination was renewed in Saul’s breast, and he set to it with the same methodical precision he put to his studies. Frank was willing enough, pleased to finally have Saul’s friendship, though he seemed a little uneasy at times at the tasks Saul had him do.

One mild afternoon early in December, with the weather mild for the time of year, Frank and Lord Saul were sitting on the far side of the red brick wall that skirted the garden, hidden from the view of Dr Ashton’s study, but overlooked by the bleak skeletal oaks in the sloping field. Lord Saul’s attention was fixed on those very trees, his being struck by the certainty that they were being watched, while Frank gazed into the glass beside him, entranced by its view onto another world. All of a sudden, while Saul’s attention focused more sharply on a pair of oaks some two hundred yards away and a shadow that seemed, by some trickery of light and shade, to be flitting between the two trunks, Frank gave a strangled gasp, his cheeks turning bright scarlet. He seemed about to thrust the glass away from him, yet continued to clasp it so tightly his knuckles had whitened. Lord Saul peered over to see what had shocked him so, and was startled when Frank jerked away, attempting to shield the glass from his view. Saul chided him and leaned in closer still, very aware of the sensation of Frank’s body trembling against him. In the glass he saw—

Movement. Entangled limbs. A fair head bent back, the eyes squeezed shut and the lips wet and red and parted. Slender fingers buried in the dark hair of a bent head. Saul felt Frank’s breath upon his cheek, and looked up—not shocked, but taken aback—to meet Frank’s gaze as the other boy stammered out something intended as both explanation and apology and which sufficed as neither. But no shame, nor disgust, Saul noted. Only fear at Saul’s reaction and embarrassment, judging by the redness of Frank’s cheeks. Against his breeches, Saul felt the urgent press of his hardening cock.

Slowly, he set his hand upon Frank’s knee. Frank stared at him and swallowed, Saul saw the bob of his throat, the tip of his pointed tongue as it moistened his lips, but he said nothing as Saul slid his hand upwards along his thigh, seeing with a glance that Frank too was hardening, the outline of his cockstand plainly visible. Saul’s creeping fingers brushed against the tip, not quite touching it, but pressing down upon the sloping tent of the wool so as to squeeze gently against the head. Frank’s eyes closed and a faintly stifled sound escaped his throat. Saul leaned in close and brought his lips to Frank’s neck, while his hand squeezed the solid bulge of Frank’s erection, making him buck. Saul caught his wrist and brought the glass back to his face. ‘Look,’ urged Saul.

‘I... can’t.’

‘ _Look_. And tell me what is happening.’

Breathless and flushed, Frank nodded, forcing his gaze down. ‘He’s… you… you have your hand around it. My...’

‘Your cockstand?’ prompted Saul. Frank had had to force himself to look at the glass, but now he seemed unable to look away from it, his eyes hungry. Still, as Saul unlaced his breeches, his eyes fluttered closed with shame or with desire. With his own cock urgent with need, Saul slipped his hand through the tails of his shirt and into the nest of Frank’s pubic hair to find the base of his cock, caught tight against his leg. It sprang towards Saul’s touch as he eased it out, the thin cushioning of silken skin slipping easily over the hard core. Frank groaned at the contact while Saul explored its length, curious at the feel and weight of another’s cock and how similar, how different, it was to his own, and fascinated by the sounds Frank made as Saul gently drew down the foreskin with a twisting gesture, thumbing the flap of skin beneath the head.

To the best of Saul’s knowledge, Frank had not once submitted to the pleasure of masturbation. Not once had Saul woken to the gentle creak of the bed, the slap of skin on skin, although once or twice while he’d masturbated himself, he had thought Frank’s breath too still for sleep and brought himself to climax thinking of Frank listening in, aroused by the sound of Saul pleasuring himself. Now, Frank seemed overcome, groaning and thrusting his hips upwards, the glass quite forgotten. And that, thought Saul, would not at all do.

‘What am I doing now?’ prompted Saul. Frank blinked and brought his feverish gaze back to the glass. It took him a few moments to gather his wits, his eyes widening and his lips parting, and Saul had to repeat his name before he could bring himself to speak.

‘You’re taking it in your mouth,’ said Frank, weakly.

Saul curled his hand around the shaft, watching the spots of high colour rising in Frank’s cheeks. The boy’s hair was dishevelled, and he was catching his lower lip between his teeth. Saul delighted in the sight of him, Dr Ashton’s all-but-sainted favourite, with his breeches bunched awkwardly around his hips, jerking his hips upwards in wordless need, his cock jutting upwards, the head already slippery and fitting so neatly into the hollow of Saul’s palm. All of a sudden, Frank groaned, and the glass slipped from his grip. With a flash of alarm, Saul squeezed his grip around Frank’s shaft, finger and thumb encircling the head.

‘Be careful,’ said Saul, unable to keep the note of fear from entering his voice. 

He snatched up the glass and slipped it away into a pocket as Frank began to beg his pardon. A moment later he stopped, his gaze lifting up to the field, past the stream and his eyes flared wide in sudden fear. ‘What—’

‘Don’t look at them,’ ordered Saul. But Frank’s gaze had fixed on something there, his breath no longer ragged with desire but with fear. His face had blanched and the whites of his eyes were showing. A light film of sweat sprung out on Saul’s brow. He felt the itch at the back of his neck, the overwhelming urge, as Orpheus had, to look behind him. To see. He grated out Frank’s name, gripped his collar and pulled his gaze forcefully down, repeating again the order not to look.

‘This is godless,’ whispered Frank. Saul could quite willingly have laughed in his face.

‘Has it truly taken you this long to realise?’ Then, even as Frank’s gaze rose unwillingly towards the trees, Saul slapped his cheek lightly. He could see them himself. flitting grey shadows at the edge of his vision. ‘I said look away.’

Frank’s voice was strained, barely above a whisper. ‘I don’t think I can.’

Saul’s rage was all the worse for being spurred on by fear. He caught hold of Frank’s hand and brought it to his own cock, pressing hard against his breeches. Frank jerked against Saul’s grip, trying to pull away, and Saul tightened his grip, holding Frank fast and crushing his hand against the length of his cock. With his other hand he seized Frank’s hair and kissed him violently, a bruising kiss, forcing Frank’s mouth open with lips and tongue, He crushed Frank against the brick, rising up above him, partly to block Frank’s view of the field and partly so he could jam his thigh between Frank’s and rut against him, until, with some reluctance, Frank began to rub Saul’s cock through his breeches, his fingers grasping weakly against its length. Little more than unpractised twitches of his hand, the squeezing of his fingers, but enough to send sparks of arousal shooting through Saul, kindling his need ever further, and when the kiss ended, the look of helpless arousal on Frank’s face was unmistakable.

‘Please,’ whispered Frank.

‘Kneel,’ said Saul, and pulled a little harder on his hair, testing the limits of whatever hold he had over him. Saul expected him to refuse, to baulk at the first hurdle, but Frank only met Saul’s eyes and dropped to his knees. With trembling fingers he unlaced Saul’s breeches, releasing his shaft. 

‘Take it in your mouth,’ Saul ordered. In a moment of seeming mulishness, Frank raised his gaze upwards, kneeling between Saul’s legs with Saul’s erection butting against his cheek. Then he turned his head a little, the head of Saul’s cock tracing along the line of his smooth cheek to the corner of his parted lips, which gleamed wetly with saliva. Saul’s fist twisted in his hair, hard enough to make Frank gasp. His lips parted, giving Saul the opening to roll his hips upwards and push the head of his cock between Frank’s lips. He felt the brief tantalising flicker of a tongue, and dropped his head back against the brick in anticipation. Frank moved as if in a dream, slowly enough to make Saul grit his teeth with impatience as Frank curled his slender fingers around the base, the close wet heat of his mouth closing over the head of the cock. Still the careful feeling of his tongue sliding experimentally over the head was exquisite. Saul gasped, moving both hands to Frank’s hair in order to guide him, to force him to take it deeper, relishing the faint pressure of Frank’s resistance.

The grey clouds scudded across the sky and the wind stirred the distant oaks. All the world seemed cast in shadow, and Saul’s building pleasure was all the sharper for how it was edged with fear of the gathering shapes which seemed to be darting across the field, always skirting the edge of his vision, but slipping ever-closer. He could hear something too, a faint rustling on the other side of the wall, like fabric or flash scraping against the brickwork, and a hoarse, wheezy breathing. There came then a faint dimming of the light, as though a cloud had covered the sun, although the sky was already over-cast. Saul sensed something above him, as though something like a cat, but much larger, had leapt up onto the top of the wall. Frank could hear it too, judging by the sudden strengthening of his resistance against Saul’s grip, the way he squirmed, his eyes rolling upwards, straining to see.

Saul’s grip tightened in Frank’s hair. ‘Don’t.’

He was close to his peak, horribly aware and excited by the wet sounds the presence above him was making. It brought to mind the image of a lolling tongue, of hot panting breath, and a sense of approval which was infectious and intoxicating for all that it was repellent.

Frank’s grip squeezed around the base of Saul’s shaft, his palm slick with perspiration and his own saliva. Saul reached down and took hold of Frank’s erection with a hot spike of pleasure at the way Frank shuddered at his touch and how he groaned around Saul’s cock. He jerked his hips unevenly into Saul’s grip, leaving a slick smear of fluid across Saul’s palm. The angle was awkward, the urgent thrusting of Frank’s hips throwing him off, but Saul stroked him, trying to establish a frantic rhythm, wanting to see Frank lose control, to come gasping and begging Saul for more. It wouldn’t take much: Frank’s eyes were squeezed shut, his hair sticking to his damp forehead and his skin fever-hot.

Then, against the curve of his throat, Saul felt it, like a breath, but bitterly cold. A sensation like whispering at his ear, without words, but flooding his mind with a series of profane and obscene images and acts. He thought of sliding his hand down Frank’s spine and between his backside, working fingers wet with saliva inside him and glorying in the noises he’d make, how he’d beg, and how tight he would be. 

Frank gasped, lifting his head from Saul’s cock to press his sweat-dampened forehead against the inside of Saul’s thigh. ‘Please.’ begged he, his voice barely above a groan. The head of Saul’s cock pressed against his cheek, anointing his skin with a wet-slick-shining streak of saliva. 

Saul began to pump Frank’s cock with steady strokes of his fist. Frank groaned, dropping his head back for an instant before returning his mouth to Saul’s cock, and this time he took Saul deeper with almost no resistance. A pulse gathered in Frank’s cock, and losing what little control he had, he reached his peak, crying out loud enough to send a flock of crows rising up from the fields and spiralling upwards as Frank spilled his seed through Saul’s fingers and onto the wet grass.

He shuddered, his face contorted with abject shame and desire and want, and altogether it was the tangle of conflicting emotions that drove Saul into a frenzy. No longer even attempting to be gentle—not that he had been gentle at all—he tangled his hands in Frank’s hair, and drove his aching hips upwards off the grass, pulling himself deeper into Frank’s mouth, concentrating on the wet slick and slide, the grunts Frank was making as Saul drove himself to orgasm, a hard knot of pleasure tightening in his groin. He came, shuddering, spasming, feeling the muscles clench and quiver around him. 

As his cock slipped free from Frank’s slack lips he laughed shakily and dropped his head back against the brick. Above him he saw a shape, just glimpsed in the instant before it slipped out of sight. It moved too fast for him to catch more than the briefest impression of its face, but its hands lingered a little longer, its long bony fingers hooked over the edge of the wall, the gnarled yellowed fingernails scraping against the brick.

Frank pulled away, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He was a ruin, his cheeks burning scarlet and his eyes feverish. He stared at Saul as if he’d seen his death approaching, as if he had seen something in Saul that he didn’t much like. As though he had come to the realisation that it might not be the creatures he should fear, but Saul himself. He gave Saul a strange conflicted look as Saul brought his own hand, still sticky with Frank’s seed, to his lips, watching the way Frank’s face flushed as Saul drew in the sharp clean scent of him, briny like the sea.

He pulled Frank close and kissed him, tasting his own seed upon Frank’s mouth. The other boy was quiet, submitting to the kiss and to Saul’s nipping at his lips, but when Saul pulled away he found Frank gazing at him, his eyes very solemn and sad.

‘I don’t want to do this anymore,’ said he, and when Saul started, he caught hold of Saul’s wrist and pressed his hand to Saul’s pocket where they could both feel the weight of the glass. ‘Please, Saul, I beg you. Throw it away. Or take it to Dr Ashton. He’ll know what to do with it.’

‘It’s too late.’ Saul jerked roughly away, feeling heat on his cheeks, a sore knot of pain in his throat. Roughly, he scrambled upwards and started away, calling back over his shoulder, ‘And if you tell your uncle—’

‘She visited me,’ Frank called after him. Saul looked back. ‘My mother. A few nights ago. Only… I don’t believe it was really her. They showed me what I wanted to see. They’re doing the same to you’

‘Just a dream—’

‘She was cold, Saul. Frozen. It was like embracing a shard of ice. I don’t want to do this anymore.’ His voice rose higher as Saul turned on him, advancing with slow steps and a studied air of menace. ‘Please, Saul.’

‘It,’ said Saul, enunciating each word with needle-sharp clarity, ‘is too late.’

The helpless despair and pity on Frank’s face would return to him in the few remaining weeks to come, along with Frank’s dying words, his last and terrible message related to Saul by Dr Ashton in his grief: _You should tell him I am afraid he will be very cold._

I find I pity Saul, for all his self-confessed wickedness. I have known boys like him, boys whose fathers never much seemed to like them. It’s far too easy for boys like that to start their stumbling way down the wrong path and find they have lost their way.

Two nights before the funeral, Saul was roused from his sleep by so strong a sensation of Frank’s presence that without thinking he sat up and turned to the empty bed, meaning to curse the other boy soundly for disturbing him. There was of course nothing there. Only the eerie stillness of a room held in waiting, of something about to happen.

Saul’s first thought as the figure rose up behind him was that he must be dreaming. As cold as it was in the room, the temperature had plunged still further, and his breath misted the air, mingling with the breath of the creature behind him, which leaned in very close—yet without touching him—and spoke with a voice that brought to mind images of a musty linen shroud, of soil rattling down upon a pitiful small coffin, and Frank’s lifeless corpse lying within that coffin waiting to be interred, and a writhing mass of long-legged insects crawling over one another, swarming across Frank’s eyes and hair. 

A wave of dizziness threatened to overwhelm him, and when he put out his hands to steady himself it was as if he could feel those very insects swarming beneath his touch. His strangled cry caught in his throat as the creature behind him rose up and curled its arm around his chest, pressing its chill dead lips to his cheek like a lover. He repressed a shudder as those lips moved from his cheek to the tender hollows of his throat, but the touch of its mouth there—neither kissing nor biting—seemed to kindle his skin into flame, making every nerve prickle in anticipatory terror of the next slow brush of its dry, closed lips. Despite his fear—or perhaps because of it—liquid arousal trickled through him, pooling in his belly. There were more of them, he realised, hidden upon the floor at the foot of, and underneath, the bed. He could not see them, but he could taste their excitement on the air, and it made his own intensify. Grey fingers clawed at the sides of the bed as the shape behind him inexorably pressed him forwards. The lips against his throat parted and he felt its tongue against his skin, tracing the hollow of his throat, tasting him,

‘Oh God,’ whispered Saul. ‘Please no.’

‘Too late, too late.’ All of them spoke at once, their rustling voices like a Greek Chorus.

There could be no fighting it. The figure’s weight pressed him forwards onto the bed, pinning him down. He felt a scratching sensation at his neck, a long, sharp fingernail, scraping gently down from his hairline and over the nape of his neck. It caught on the collar of his nightgown, tugging it down, and all the while those dry lips and tongue trailed along his throat, leaving his skin prickling with sensation, It set its knees between his, pushing his legs apart as it raked at the hem of his nightgown, drawing it up over the backs of his thighs and arse, and further still, so that it bunched around his waist, leaving the lower half of his body exposed and vulnerable. Its movements were tantalisingly slow and left him in an anticipatory agony of fear, not knowing what would happen next, but wanting it even as he feared what they might do, knowing how badly he had failed them in losing Frank.

Against his throat, the lips opened wider and teeth pricked into his skin, very delicately, like a mother cat carrying her kittens. It did not break the skin, but sufficed to make him shudder with fear and a sudden sharp stab of need. His cock, already stiffening, pressed hard against the bed, little helped by the way the creature moved as it sat astride him, gently rocking its weight, deliberately grinding him against the bed.

All around the edges of the bed, even where it butted against the wall, crooked fingers—some shrivelled back to the bone, others covered in coarse dark hairs— curled over the top of the bed, while they otherwise remained unseen. He could hear them moving about beneath the bed, the _scritch_ of nails against the ground, like rats in the walls. Then, disbelieving, he felt the brush of hands against his ankles. He jerked, but pinned down as he was he couldn’t prevent the hands from gripping his ankles tight, and tugging his legs gently apart. The same touch came at his wrists, and as he looked up, he saw something peeping over the edge of the bed. He had barely enough time to glimpse wide staring lidless eyes, a face sunken inwards with rot and a rictus grin of yellowed teeth too long in the withered gums, and then the creature astride him gripped the back of his head and forced his face down into the bed. For a moment he could not breathe, and he squirmed, panicked, finally managing to turn his head to the side where he gasped gratefully at the air. The hands on his wrists and ankles tightened like manacles, holding him fast as the creature atop him contrived to push his nightgown further and further up, past his upper back and over his head, so that it covered his face like the hood of a man condemned to die.

At once the shadows erupted, dancing against the linen. He struggled, but could neither break the grip on his limbs nor shift the weight on his back as the thing atop him slid its icy hands slowly down his exposed spine to his buttocks. Saul stammered, ‘Please,’ not knowing what he meant by it, only knowing that he could scream for help if he chose, but aware that the penalty for doing so would be severe. Nor was he certain that anyone would come if they heard him screaming. They blamed him for Frank, all of them, and worst of all, they were right to.

Besides, there was still, despite his fear, a part of him that wanted this. Wasn’t this what he had longed or, or something very like it? Power, knowledge, pleasure. The indulgences of a bored and sullen boy. What he had done with Frank had left him hungry for more, and he was eager—his cock so hard it was painful—to show them how very, very willing he was.

The thing’s touch scorched its way down the underside of his balls, along his perineum and into the crease of his buttocks before retreating. A probing finger, slick with saliva—with something—found his arsehole and moistened it. Saul groaned into the bed as the finger eased its way inside him, penetrating his passage and achingly slowly twisted its way deeper, until it was buried inside him up to the bony knuckle. The finger was soon joined by another, stretching out his tight passage, and not gently. He could feel the creature’s hardness, an insistent pressure jabbing against his thigh, as it rutted against him, leaving a slick fluid that burned like ice on the back of his thigh. From the feel of it, it was large. He tried, in a frenzy of horror, to imagine it driving that cock inside him, and the spiralling excitement and fear and the sensations of the finger twisting inside him made him sob out loud. ‘Oh God.’

All around the bed a wheezing erupted at his blasphemy, a shrilling sound of excitement and a gnashing of teeth, their combined exultation so savage and fierce the bed rattled and shook, and all through this the fingers worked at him, striking against a spot that ratcheted his pleasure ever higher. With thrusting, sharp little jabs of its fingers, it brought him to the brink, until he was gasping, begging for more and grinding himself against the bed, arching up towards it, seeking deeper entry and wanting to feel the solid weight and hardness of its cock. Pain and pleasure intermingled, and it felt like being flayed. 

Until, without warning, the fingers inside him went still. Despite his hoarse pleas, they remained immovable, the creature heedless to his plight, to the desperate jerking of his hips and his hitching breath, and then, again without warning, the fingers slipped free of his body entirely, leaving him empty and aching. Part of Saul was sickened at the desperation in his voice, but he still could not have stopped himself from arching his arse up in the hopes of _more_.

Hands gripped his buttocks and splayed them, nails pricking at his skin, and then he felt the press of something thicker than a finger, the head of a cock pressing insistently at his arsehole, wet with some slick and burning fluid and much thicker than he was expecting, so thick that even his overwhelming excitement was tempered by a sharp shock of alarm.

‘Wait,’ said he, but from behind him came a hiss of baleful amusement, and it entered him with a single stroke. Saul’s fingers clawed at the bedclothes, pain and pleasure entwined so closely he could never have untangled the two. The creature gripped in his hair, pulling his head back so sharply the back of his neck ached. The hem of the nightgown rode up so far it only half-concealed his vision, so that he could just see the grey shapes cavorting all about him in the room. The thing behind him thrust deeper, so big he was stretched tight around its shaft as it took him with rough strokes, each rocking movement stoking the fires of his pleasure and bringing him closer to the brink. The rising tide of pleasure threatened to sweep everything away, as with each thrust he was slammed down into the bed so hard it knocked the wind from him. The nightgown threatened to slip from his head completely, and the thought of being able to see the shapes that rutted and cavorted around him filled him with a stark terror so intense his eyes blurred still further with tears.

A sudden hiss of delight came from the foot of the bed, and one of them bounded closer, bringing its face up to his. Its tongue scraped against his exposed cheeks as it tasted him, breath coming in gleeful rasps as the salt-brine of his tears left it transported with delight. Its delight aroused the others, and in a frenzy they clambered onto the bed, swarming close around him, filling his nostrils with the stink of their musk. He heard the wet slap of flesh on flesh, felt something hard and fever-hot and barbed jabbing against his cheek, insistent against the corner of his mouth, and he shuddered, twisting his face away. The bed’s creaking frame heaved as from all around him rang out a raucous chorus of unmistakeably sexual grunts and breathy cries, and intoxicated with lust and desperation, he began to jerk his hips upwards, the sounds and movements all around him flooding his mind with a thousand and one images each more tormenting and obscene than the last.

The thing fucking him leaned forwards, planting a hand on the bed beside his cheek. For a moment he saw it clearly, and it struck him in a sudden moment of clarity that the skin and fingers were smooth and pale, rather than grey and shrivelled. Then the creature curled its arm around his chest, and hauled him backwards with freakish strength, still buried to the hilt inside him. Saul experienced a moment of terror at the strain in his lower back, before he managed to adjust his legs to prevent his spine from being snapped him in two.

Bodies squirmed around him and underneath him. Their teeth prickled on his skin, as they nipped, scraped, gnawed, like dogs at bones. Countless hot wet mouths and tongues slathered along the length of his straining cock and sucked at his tightened balls. Almost tenderly, the creature brought its teeth to his throat, and then there was almost no pain but only pleasure, and it was glorious and terrifying. Saul had passed beyond rational thought and he was coming, praying in broken breaths, not to God, but to them.

At the moment of his spending, without warning, his nightshirt was torn from his head. He blinked, gasping as his cock pulsed, and he saw the upturned faces and dangling tongues of the creatures that had frozen momentarily in the dance of the rut to receive his seed, but it was too late to stop himself from coming, harder than he could remember ever having come before, the pleasure so intense his knees weakened as it swept through him like a flood.

In its wake, he caught sight of his own reflection in the window, and behind him, the face leering over his shoulder, that pallid death mask frozen forever in a fixed mask of beauty. The creature fucking him, the creature whose face he could now see and recognise, allowed him no respite, but continued to fuck him with long unceasing strokes as it drove itself to its own peak inside him.

As it slipped free from him, he crumpled, opening his mouth to scream. The others cradled him, clawed at him, marking his skin with their nails and teeth. Fingers twined into his mouth, cutting off his screams, and the thing that wore Frank’s face was looming above him, and he saw with unrelenting horror that it was still hard, its cock solid and straining, and its teeth were bared.

He had no need for a glass now. Its eyes were glass enough, and in them he saw his death and it was fast approaching.

Just not quite _yet_.

* * *

I have been told that ghosts grow thinner over time. There is some truth to that, I believe, judging by the face I saw so briefly at the window staring in at me in a paroxysm of terror. There had not been much left of Lord Saul at that moment. He had been little more than a shadow cast upon the world. At least at first.

A stirring came at the window. No sound, but a sense of movement, enough to bring me to lift my head from my writing. Rising, I crossed to the window and saw him approaching, the flit of a shadowy figure which seemed to grow more tangible as it drew closer to my window.

He came up close to the glass, the hands outstretched as though reaching for me. The eyes were hollow, gaunt staring shadows, the hair a ragged curtain of black—an ugly thin ghost indeed, but more certain than the previous night, as though my presence strengthened his.

The bone-white pads of his fingers pressed against the glass. His lipless mouth formed a single, soundless word: _Frank_.

‘Not quite,’ I murmured, and smiled. His face remained fixed, but a shudder passed through him. ‘But close enough.’

He snatched his fingers away from the glass as though it burned him. And I wondered: allowed to wither away to nothing but a wisp, had Lord Saul been so foolish as to begin to think that he might finally be free? Well, if so, the scales had finally fallen from his eyes, that self-proclaimed wicked soul, just as they had for his namesake. He saw the truth now, although I judged as he stumbled away and turned to flee that he would find little redemption in it.

Poor boy. I had left it so long I'd almost forgotten.

But it was finally time for the hunt to recommence.


End file.
